About Watch Russia
Kazimir Malevich stands as a central figure of the 20th century. His triumph lies in his enduring impact. Yet, his legacy is tragic as well: after his death, he was erased from public memory and excluded from the annals of art in his own country. Yet, no one could escape his influence. Today, whether consciously or unconsciously, we inhabit his Suprematist world dominated by artificial forms and symbols.
Malevich’s background was ethnically diverse. Born in Kiev, he was fluent in Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian. Sometimes identifying himself as Ukrainian, he more commonly referred to himself as a Citizen of the World, devoid of nationality. Though he had no formal artistic training, Malevich was immersed in folk art from childhood. Some scholars argue that certain radical traits and techniques he employed stemmed directly from folklore, much like Impressionism was shaped by Japanese woodblock prints, and Cubism drew inspiration from primitive African art. White backgrounds in his Suprematist compositions likely derive from childhood impressions of peasant murals on whitewashed walls and bright patterns embroidered on snow-white shirts.
Malevich’s Black Square stands as a corner-stone work of the 20th century. Introduced in 1915, Suprematism, born with this painting, was not intended by its creator to be merely an artistic trend but rather a blueprint for a new stylistic paradigm of the world. Hence, its Latin-inspired name, meaning “supreme”, fits perfectly.
In his Suprematist compositions, Malevich not only sought liberation from figurative constraints in visual arts but aimed for something far grander: exploration of the foundational elements of the cosmos itself. Beyond rejecting realism, he aspired to create a structured universe governed by clear geometry and universal principles.
Suprematism represents both a technological framework and transformative ideology applicable to various domains of human activity: fine and applied arts, theatre and related disciplines, architecture and design, semiotics, and systems of information encoding.
Like all artists of the early 20th century, Kazimir Malevich sequentially explored impressionism, expressionism, and cubism. He naturally grappled with the crucial question of his generation: “what to do after Cézanne?”, the father of modern painting. Picasso and Braque answered with cubism, Larionov with rayism, Duchamp with readymades, abandoning painting altogether, and Kandinsky with abstract art. Suprematism was Malevich’s original path.
Crucial to the emergence of Suprematism was the convergence of Cubism and Futurism in Russia, fostering creative exchanges between artists associated with Cubism, and poets of the futurist movement. In Malevich’s biography, poets like Velimir Khlebnikov, an experimental word inventor, played a significant role equal to that of Cézanne. A pivotal moment in articulating the foundations of Suprematism was Malevich’s work on sets for Mikhail Matyushin and Aleksei Kruchenykh Victory Over the Sun futurist opera. Its creation involved synthesising words, music and form. Malevich’s new Suprematist vision of the world demanded synthesis. Only through such integration could one begin posing global questions of form-making and seek a stylistic module capable of transforming the world.
Unlike other Russian avant-garde artists who studied painting in Paris, Malevich did not leave Russia until 1927. He ventured abroad for his first solo show in Berlin but was abruptly summoned back to the USSR, arrested for a month on charges of espionage, and thereafter barred from travelling to the west.
About seventy paintings and his entire archive, consisting of architectural projects and manuscripts, ended up in Germany with architect Hugo Häring. Fleeing hastily to his homeland, Malevich even drafted a will in case of “death or wrongful imprisonment.”
Today, the biggest collection of his works outside Russia resides in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum.
At the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in 1915, Malevich displayed his Black Square in the corner, which prompted Alexandre Benois to see it as a “claim to iconic status.” Malevich replicated the Square three times: for the Venice Biennale, for a personal exhibition, and for the Russian Museum.
In the late 1920s, Malevich returned to figurativeness: he painted peasants without faces, but with faces, not portraits, but parsons of Modern times. The self-portrait of 1934 became a homage to Impressionism, a dialogue with the old masters. The Impressionists did not use black, and Malevich, the creator of the Black Square, was not afraid of it. And in the self-portrait, a face painted in broad strokes appears on a solid black background. This is not a proud demonstration of himself to the world, as in the self-portrait of 1933, where the artist appears in the image of the Venetian doge, but a psychological turning inside out. Malevich always said that an artist should draw “from himself.” It is in this self-portrait that we see Malevich’s inner self. And there, of course, are abysses! Fermentation, the struggle of light and shadow, styles and manners. Oh, how stressful it was to be Kazimir Malevich.